Really there is a laundry list of problems with the team and even more regading the organization/ownership. They seem to be making some headway but it's not the kind of thing that will improve over night.
I won't get going all
on the organziation again but the main problem has been and continues to be that the team barely has second liners let alone first. They have a long and storied tradition of not being able to draft and terribly mismanaging the players they lucked into having that have became stars. Yes they traded Hasek, but that's a tough one to pin on them as back then he was just a nightmare who played like he was having seziures not protecting the net... So really in the recent era of things still affecting the team I guess it goes all the way back to the trading of our last big-time true superstar forward in Roenick for Zhamnov. He was then made to be a first line center which he isn't and even more rediculously later on team Captain which he certainly is not, just ask Boston.
From then on it's been a series of moves trying to hammer square pegs into round holes. Amonte? The organazition felt they needed to prove some kind of point and neither offered him a real contract OR traded him; the team got a conditional pick for him.
. Sullivan? Who still isn't a
true first liner but could score and played with heart every day was dealt to Nashville, where he's doing okay I guess
[/sarcasm] They got two 2nd rounders for him which became Garlock & Blunden who may help the team but it's several years from happening. The one that is absolutely devastating though is that Mike Smith dealt Brian McCabe to Toronto (where Smith used to work before they canned him) for Alex 'the walking wound' Karpovtsev who is an absolute joke and was a daily embarrasment to the team for years. Beyond mentioning that he quite literally blew his knee out straining on the toilet before a game I'll leave the
on that one to our long-time color commentator Pat Foley (this .mp3 is 2:12 long and over 1 meg but worth it!):
Good Riddance
This year the did some things right (Dale Tallon as GM, Yawney as coach, Aucoin on D and Khabi in Goal) and some terribly wrong including loading up the offense with more overpaid third liners: bringing in LaPointe (who fans have started calling LePaycheck as he's signed for 2.4 million!), Barnaby, Brown and Dowd none of whom should be on the team. They also fooled themselves that they didn't need to get a scorer because they had a 30 goal scorer already in Daze who hasn't played a game. On defense they brought in the equally brutal Todd Simpson and Jassen Cullimore again overpaying. Every one of these players is a nightmare in the "New NHL" due to being slow and "physical" which these days only means they were masters of obstruction and hooking/holding. This of course leads to the team's biggest problem which is complete lack of ability to stay out of the penalty box. Look for the names I mentioned in this depressing little box:
The Hawks have been penalized far and away more than any other team. A good deal of that being 5 on 3 disadvantage, in one game I saw them with two men in the box SIX different times. By mid November they'd been shorthanded 5 on 3 more times than any teams in the entire year of the 2003-2004 season.
Aucoin has been hurt the majority of the year so I think the sheer number of kills required by the team is the real reason Khabi has looked so bad. He was in shock after playing with people who actually knew the position...
.
